Pipedrive and Salesforce are popular CRM software that have been adopted by businesses; small and medium to large enterprises. If you are in the market for a CRM solution to strengthen your sales process, this post will help you take an informed decision by highlighting some of the key factors based on which, CRM software (for small business) should be selected.

Salesforce

Ease of use

Ease of use is important for any modern app. Traditionally Saleforce has been lagging in this area, However their latest lightening UI provides a viable solution in terms of UI. When you log in, the dashboard presents wide range of report widgets that provides a bird’s-eye view of how the revenue. Sales reps can also view real-time summaries of their performance and customer data. The dashboard can also be customized to show you data related to wide range of key metrics — from sales quota and pipelines to key opportunities, leaderboards and more.

There is a simple navigation at the left hand side. Each tab is separated into the categories, such as Home, Contacts, Accounts, Leads, Campaigns, Opportunities, Forecasts Files and more. As part of the dashboard’s customizability, you can also reconfigure each tab or add your own as per your preference.

Some of the areas such as pipeline management and deal settings demand higher learning curve as there are multiple steps involved in the process.

Features

Salesforce has plethora of features and integrates with many third party apps. If something is not available, then the Salesforce marketplace allows to purchase the add-on to fit your business process flow. However, this very fact makes it cumbersome and costly for small businesses. Key features:

• Contact management
• Lead tracking — from campaigns and marketing acquisition channels to the sales pipeline
• Deal evaluation and quotation tools
• Sales forecasting
• Reporting tools
• Team collaboration with access to associated files, reports, data sources, leads and more
• Workflow automation
• Mobile App

Limitations: A big concern for small business owners is that there are additional costs associated with using Salesforce beyond its core capabilities. For instance, third-party apps that require additional licenses or accounts, such as Data.com, aren’t part of Salesforce’s pricing plan. You’ll end up paying for those services on top of the already expensive Salesforce subscription.

For small businesses, Salesforce’s biggest strength is also its weakness. Because of the robustness of the CRM app, it can be a good choice for larger businesses and at the same time it can be overwhelming for small companies that don’t need such an exhaustive software solution.

Pricing

Given below is the pricing of Salesforce which limits usage of feature and differentiates in terms of customer support apart from locking the customer for a year.

Lightning Essentials (up to 5 users)	Lightning Professional   (unlimited team size)	Lightning Enterprise   (Additional customization options)	Lightning Unlimited   (Power users with priority support)
25 USD/user/month (billed annually)	$75 per user (billed annually)	$150 per user (billed annually)	$300 per user (billed annually)

Pipedrive

Ease of use

Pipedrive is known for its simplicity and usability. The on-boarding comes with a guided tour where the app prompts you to perform various basic activities like deal and contact creation. Although it can be considered as a good sales pipeline management tool, it lacks holistic approach towards the needs of a small business.

Features

Pipedrive was built with the philosophy that majority of the features are not used by sales personnel. Hence, this it came up with basic functionalities; however, over time the features have grown to accommodate the needs of bigger companies as well. Given below are the key features

• Pipedrive is based on sales pipeline and the activities are closely tied with deals to ensure that the deals move from one stage to another. You can manage sales pipeline and contacts as well as use the data import/export functionality.
• Integrations: There are 80+ third party apps integrated with Pipedrive which portrays the extent of dependency on other apps in order to set up the business process.
• Email tracking: Email tracking is quite important for salesperson — it allows your team to keep track of the conversation for quick reference while carrying out sales activities to close the deals.
• Pre-built reporting and sales forecasting
• Mobile apps
• Customization options

Pricing

Here is the pricing of Pipedrive that restricts you from using certain features based on the plan:

Silver  (Smart BCC email)	Gold   (Full email sync – send and receive email)	Platinum   (Phone support and private storage)
10 USD/user/month (billed annually)	$24 (billed annually)	$63 per user (billed annually)

Why TeamWave is a better alternative for small businesses

TeamWave is built by a small business for small businesses worldwide. Our mission is to provide a unified platform for collaboration, sales & marketing to small businesses at an affordable price. TeamWave offers a complete software suite of essential apps required to run a small company, i.e., CRM, project management, people management & more.

TeamWave’s CRM offers the following features while ensuring great usability:

• Visual sales pipeline which offers pre-built sales stages along with option to configure as per your company’s business process. Robust contact management functionality along with import/export tool.
• Activities tied to the deals that comes with reminders
• Email integration
• Goal set up to help your team achieve their sales targets.
• Third party app integration including Google apps and Zapier
• Free API access for additional customization and integration
• Sales forecasting
• Sales automation (creating deals and contacts via emails)
• Pre-built reports to track deal closure, performance of the salesperson and sales activities
• Mobile app

Apart from the above-mentioned features, because of TeamWave’s software suite, the native project and people management apps provide additional benefits. Here are the key advantages:

• Important files can be copied from deals to projects (example: requirement document) with a few clicks. This comes handy when you commence project delivery after winning a deal.
• In the HR app, if you add someone as the reporting manager of a sales rep, then the reporting manager will be automatically added as a deal follower whenever the sales rep adds a new deal. This fosters collaboration and helps in progress tracking.

Finally, all these apps are not differentiated based any tiered plan. The pricing is simple and straightforward — all the users get to use all the features and apps (pricing is only based on the number of users). 

Comparative view of the pricing for 10 users in case of annual subscription plan:

Takeaway

TeamWave delivers essential software suite required for any small business while ensuring robust set of features and superior user experience. And all this comes at a fraction of the cost you’d pay for the other alternatives.

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